


unravel me in parts (entwine these frosted hearts)

by nottesilhouette



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Action AU (sort of), F/M, LBSC Sprint Fic Challenge, Secret Santa Exchange, a brief moment of action, aka... there is a lot of cookie baking, and a lot of fluff to pad it out, and a lot of nothing, and kisses, and the brief moment of action aaalmost makes a point, and then there's more flustered boy, baking cookies, but happy nothing so that's good, but then it goes back to nothing, by way of pigeon man akuma, in vague terms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:47:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28106526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nottesilhouette/pseuds/nottesilhouette
Summary: They're baking cookies. How could this go wrong?One pigeon attack later, Luka will answer, "not at all."They're baking cookies and falling in love, or already fallen, maybe, and doing nothing but the kind of nothing that matters even when it's long forgotten. There are cookies and something else warm, and a flustered boy and a flustered girl, and the teasing hint of someone more under all the blushes and bright eyes.But they've got the rest of their lives to work that out. Right now, it's time to kiss sugar from their lover's lips and bask in the winter warmth.
Relationships: Luka Couffaine/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 6
Kudos: 33
Collections: LBSCSprintFicChallenge





	unravel me in parts (entwine these frosted hearts)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theriveroflight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theriveroflight/gifts).



Luka shows up at the bakery door bundled up in blue coats and white scarves and beanies embroidered with Marinette’s name on them, stark against the black-blue hue of his hair and somehow soft enough to show off the snowflakes dusting his hair, his cheeks, his hands. His guitar is slung behind his back in its case, because even in the awful snowy weather he can’t bear to leave it behind. 

Marinette drags her fingers down his peacoat appreciatively, gaze raking down his body full of fondness and something else, and Luka is suddenly uncomfortably warm even still standing on her doorstep in the winter wind. She plays with the double line of buttons with deft, nimble fingers pricked through with needle scars and tugs him in by his scarf, spins him around by it until he’s unraveled piece by flustered piece. She kisses his nose, bright red already but redder as his blood rushes to the impression her lips leave behind and add to the lipstick she’s smudged there, and Luka chases her lips but Marinette ducks under him and darts away. 

“Oh, you can warm up by the oven  _ just _ fine, actually!” she calls, tossing a wink over her shoulder, and Luka pretends to grumble the entire way there. 

All the ingredients are set out with careful labels and instructions in color coded numbered order, and Luka knows she was thinking of the chaos of baking on the Liberty, with half baked cookies and ideas, liberal substitutions until they weren’t even sure if what they had was food but goodness if it didn’t make them laugh, and feel warm and full anyways. He teases her anyways. 

“Isn’t the scavenger hunt half the fun?” 

She scowls at him then grins, and he chuckles at the way she can’t hold her anger for a moment even in play. “We can play that on the boat; today we’re making gift cookies and they need to be  _ edible _ , Luka.” 

“Those were edible!” He’s adamant about this, even if it’s not true, and he’ll insist on it as long as it makes her crinkle her nose like that, cute as a button and cuter because it’s her. 

“They were absolutely not.” She looks so cross he can’t help but grab her hand and kiss the palm of it just to watch her fluster from the corner of his eye. 

Her voice is awfully comforting to listen to and Luka finds himself lapsing into an easy silence, letting her instructions wash over him like the melody in his heart, moving to the rhythm of her speech and measuring and pouring and whisking, ducking around each other in perfect synchrony, bumping hips and hearts until they’re hopelessly entwined and never want to let go. 

It’s definitely not perfect synchrony, though, because by the time he looks up as the cookie dough chills, she’s got flour on her cheek that only smudges worse when he tries to brush it off, and the snowflakes in his hair have been easily replaced with powdered sugar. He’s not even sure where it came from, they’ve not started on frosting but he must have bumped into the bag she set out so carefully when he reached for the wrong sugar despite all of the instructions (her voice, her writing, her sharp glare when he ignored the first two) she set out for him.

(“The only sugar I need is you, Mari!!!” 

“You cannot bake me into cookies.”    
  
“...yeah, that’s fair.”)

The cookies slip in and out of the oven, and in the waiting times there’s frosting to be made and dishwashing to be done, and there’s music and domestic conversation that goes by so gently it’s nothing more than a snowflake on their cheek, unique, melted, gone before it registers what the shape of it is but leaving the lingering ghostly impression of good memories and laughter, a snowflake’s gentle kiss on their skin. She’s holding his arms as he whisks and there’s muscle like corded steel that he’s never noticed before. She’s so slight. Her arms are flexing against his and he hopes the sugar still coating his face hides the blush as red as the dye they’re mixing in, because how can she be this strong? 

He knows how. She always has been, and it shows now in her body. 

He turns around in her arms and kisses her, and refuses to say why. 

The cookies are cooling and she’s on the counter kicking her legs, sneaking tastes of the frosting until her fingers are dyed technicolor rainbow. Luka holds her by the waist and stands between her legs and steals kisses that taste like processed sugar and vanilla and love. 

Marinette is explaining the chemistry of baking, and Luka spares a thought for why she’s never sounded this excited when the reactions are about chemicals instead of food, and how she’s learned so much when she’s never in class, and then tunes back to listen to her. There’s enough space on the counters now that he’s done all the dishes and put them away at her direction that he can jump up with his guitar, set her passion to a melody and focus better with the guitar strings purring under his fingers. There’s a story in her voice and the wild motion of her hands, and another in the gentle tune of his guitar and the way his fingers twitch across it, tap rhythm on the body of its wood, and their stories come together to make something rounded, complete and rich and deep with flavor built layer by patient layer. 

It’s not the same story, he can hear it in the harmonies the way they diverge and come together; it’s something round and three dimensional and complementary to each other. Marinette will liken it to frosting flavors and sugar syrup crumb coats and the yin-yang balance of the heroes of Paris, and, with big blue eyes peeking coyly up between her lashes, the two of them. 

Luka and Marinette. Marinette and Luka. 

Hours or minutes later, Marinette is teasing him for wobbly icing lines, and when she calls them cute Luka swipes a thumb across her immaculately frosted ones just to see her startle, watch her nose scrunch up. 

She recovers it immaculately and gets a treat watching his eyes widen in delighted surprise when he licks the frosting off his fingers, having refused to try it up until then, and Luka can’t even find it in him to be a little jealous of the way her cookie  _ still _ comes out better than his when she’s so smugly pleased with herself. 

They’re setting out cellophane and ribbons as the frosting sets, and Luka has discovered that Marinette (or her parents) own a dehydrator, and Marinette is giggling at the rainbow arcing through the cellophane help up to the light when Mister Pigeon, in full akuma regalia, bursts in. 

She’s all action, a flurry of motion Luka takes hours to process after the fact. In the moment, all he sees is feathers and the rainbow of cellophane and satiny ribbons in a maelstrom of chaos and control, and it’s obvious even then that Marinette, leaping from counters and deftly, casually trussing up this man, is the one in charge. 

Luka’s lost and dizzy by the way cookie crumbs fly, nearly slips on butter despite hardly moving. Wasn’t that on the counter a moment ago? Marinette is over there, she couldn’t possibly have… but she’s behind him a blink later. The akuma seems equally confused; Luka nearly wishes he were one of the pigeons for a moment if only to escape the heart pounding insanity of Marinette’s whirlwind force. The kitchen tears itself apart and rebuilds itself to her wishes and Luka finds himself feeling at home with it, happy to exist in a place that feels the way he does around her, unraveled, stitched back together under her patient loving care. He still has no clue what’s going on. 

Later, he’ll work out that she tossed cookie scraps for the pigeons to fight over outside, kept the kitchen clean and up to code standards with impeccable presence of mind even in the quarter heartbeat she must’ve had to work out the situation and its parameters. She’s swung ribbons in colors they’d already decided they hated at Monsieur Ramier, dodging and ducking and deftly weaving him into a trussed up bird ripe for ruin. She tosses buttered parchment paper to the floor for him to slip on and flour in his eyes, and manages to avoid all of it as she moves. 

At a sharp look from her, the butterfly sheepishly slinks out of the object and flutters away. She offers a jaunty, cheerful wave and wink goodbye to it, and a cookie to the now confused un-pigeoned man sitting dazed in this kitchen, still so clean despite the mess she should’ve made. He awkwardly offers to help clean and then slinks out when Marinette smiles gently at him, offers him a cookie, and shows him the door. 

Luka is just gaping. 

When did this happen? When was Marinette  _ this, _ bold and deft and sassy instead of slight and clumsy and made of so much love she couldn’t carry it all? But it’s the same her. He can see it in the determination etched in every clumsy motion, the glimmer in her eyes when she sketches and plans. 

  
“You’ve got frosting on your cheek, y’know,” she teases, and kisses the corner of his lips. 

Then he’s gaping for a whole other reason. 

He chases that kiss too, and this time he catches her, and doesn’t plan to let go. 

She doesn’t plan to let him, either. 

**Author's Note:**

> This was so fun to write, I didn't think I'd manage to write as much as I did but the sprint (and the planning sessions with Crow and Music Fren) got me really motivated to finish this gift. I really hope my giftee likes it! I'm not sure I managed to hit all the prompts I was going for but it's cute and soft and fluffy, and there's angry pigeons in it, so... :P 
> 
> (I also continue my terrible habit of aggressively modeling Lukanette after me and Crow, but pay no mind.)


End file.
